Marianne Schnall is a widely published freelance journalist who has interviewed many of the world's most interesting and influential women. In her book, Daring to Be Ourselves, she brings together for the first time the most inspiring and empowering quotes from these interviews. The result is a compelling collection of insights and words of wisdom from women such as Maya Angelou, Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem, Madeleine Albright, Jane Goodall, Melissa Etheridge, Cameron Diaz, and many others.

Marianne has worked for many media outlets and publications. Her interviews with well-known individuals have appeared in publications such as O, the Oprah Magazine, Glamour, InStyle, Entertainment Weekly's website EW.com, the Huffington Post, and the Women's Media Center.

Marianne is also the founder and executive director of Feminist.com, a leading women's website and nonprofit organization. For over fifteen years, Feminist.com has been fostering awareness, education, and activism for people all across the world. Marianne is also the cofounder of EcoMall.com, one of the Internet's oldest environmental websites promoting earth-friendly living.

Through her writings, interviews, and websites, Marianne strives to inspire change by bringing attention to important issues and causes that affect our world.

Examples of Blue Mountain Arts products by Marianne Schnall

Books

If we're by ourselves we come to feel crazy and alone. We need to make alternate families of small groups of women who support each other, talk to each other regularly, can speak their truths and their experiences and find they're not alone in them, that other women have them, too…. It makes such a huge difference.

--Gloria Steinem

What Message Would You Most Want
to Instill in Young Girls?

You are more powerful than you know; you are beautiful just as you are.

--Melissa Etheridge

Our Most Difficult Times
Can Open Our Hearts

We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. It may even be necessary to encounter the defeat so that we can know who we are. So that we can see, “Oh, that happened, and I rose. I did get knocked down flat in front of the whole world, and I rose. I didn't run away; I rose right where I'd been knocked down.” That's how you get to know yourself.

--Maya Angelou

We Are Beautiful Just as We Are

I always thought that people told you that you're beautiful—that this was a title that was bestowed upon you, that it was other people's responsibility to give you this title. And I'm sick of waiting, people! I think that the world is pretty cruel to women in what it considers beautiful and what it celebrates as beauty. And I think that it's time to take this power into our own hands and to say, "You know what? I'm beautiful. I just am. And that's my light. I'm just a beautiful woman."

--Margaret Cho

Owning Our Power

Get over the feeling that the two words don't go together—women and power. The fact is, if we don't put the two together and don't understand how power changes complexion in the hands of women, then we're not going to make it. We have to own our personal power.

--Jane Fonda

Illuminating Our Dreams

I think that if you just follow your heart… you can do anything. You can have anything possible. That's what I've experienced.